


there are words lingering

by theafterimages



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Accidental Kissing, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 21:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5556995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theafterimages/pseuds/theafterimages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first two kisses are accidents, but the third… well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there are words lingering

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially inspired in part by [this fanart](http://duckhymne.tumblr.com/post/131160453609/baekchen-pocky-game). Thank you to R for betaing this!

Jongdae spends years telling everyone that his first kiss was with his eighth grade girlfriend, Bomi. Nobody needs to know that technically his lips did touch one other person’s first: his best friend, Baekhyun.

It happened the summer before seventh grade. Baekhyun was over at Jongdae’s house, and they were teasing Jongdae’s brother about how his new girlfriend’s parents had caught him kissing her. The whole thing is a complete accident: Baekhyun and Jongdae were both making kissing faces and noises at him, until Jongdae had been so entertained by Baekhyun’s imitations that he’d given up and just laughed at him instead. Fed up with both of them, Jongdae’s brother had pushed Jongdae, and he had tripped forward…

Landing mouth-first against Baekhyun’s still-puckered lips.

Both boys had jumped back with a howl, Jongdae’s in indignation, Baekhyun’s because he’d bitten the inside of his mouth. 

Jongdae’s brother, meanwhile, had doubled over laughing. “Was that your first kiss?” he had mocked them.

“ _It doesn’t count_!” Jongdae insisted, for what would prove to be the first of many times.

He couldn’t look at Baekhyun for days afterwards, and Jongdae’s brother used it to blackmail Jongdae into doing his chores for weeks, until Jongdae finally had something on him, too. But still, it was just a stupid, random accident, so it shouldn’t count as _anything_ , much less a real first kiss. Just something Jongdae hopes frantically he’ll one day be able to forget all about, because obviously nothing like it could ever happen again.

 

 

 

 

 

Or so he thinks until a fateful day in tenth grade: at Jongdae’s house, again, but this time their friends Kyungsoo and Chanyeol are with them, too. Chanyeol had brought a box of pocky that the other three had bullied him into sharing—well, Baekhyun had bullied, Jongdae had wheedled, and Kyungsoo had quietly mentioned wanting one, at which point Chanyeol had given in and passed the whole box across the table. Baekhyun intercepts it before Kyungsoo can, a look Jongdae recognizes all too well crossing his face as he glances from Chanyeol to Kyungsoo and back again.

“Have you ever played the pocky game?” Baekhyun asks them. He grabs a pocky stick, sticking one end between his teeth and smiling smugly around it at the other three.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “I’m not playing the pocky game with you, Baekyhun.”

“Who wants you?” Baekhyun says with a snort. “I’ll be with Jongdae, you be with Chanyeol.” Chanyeol startles, his eyes darting to Kyungsoo, the usual starry-eyed look in them now mixed with panic. “We’ll see whose piece is the shortest.”

“Why do you even want to do this?” Kyungsoo asks, shaking his head.

“Oh, I get it, you don’t even want to try because you know you’ll lose?” Baekhyun goads. “Like how I beat you for the chorus solo last year-”

Kyungsoo’s eyes narrow. Jongdae catches the way Chanyeol is staring at him, like he finds the homicidal look hot, and adds it to the ever-growing mental list of things he wishes he didn’t know about his friends. “Okay, fine. Chanyeol?”

“I’m in,” Chanyeol says quickly.

Baekhyun grins. “Good. Jongdae, what about you?” He turns to Jongdae expectantly, squeezes his thigh under the table. 

Jongdae jolts at the touch, rolling his eyes when it makes Baekhyun laugh. “Fine, I’ll play.”

This isn’t the first time Baekhyun’s tried to push Chanyeol and Kyungsoo together, but it’s definitely the most heavy-handed. He always says it’s because he’s tired of watching Chanyeol moon around after Kyungsoo, but Jongdae knows it’s because that’s who Baekhyun is—he’d do anything for the people he cares about, including Chanyeol. 

That doesn’t mean he’s just going to hand them the game, though.

“Make it look good,” he whispers to Jongdae while they all arrange their chairs so that they’re facing each other. Baekhyun’s voice is easily covered by Chanyeol’s loud, nervous laugh across the table. “We have to make Kyungsoo want to beat us.”

“Why am I doing any of this?” Jongdae whispers back.

“Because you’re a good friend,” Baekhyun says, giving him an exaggeratedly sweet smile. Then he looks over at Kyungsoo and Chanyeol. “Okay, who’s going first?”

Chanyeol wins the ensuing game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, though instead of saying they’ll go first, like he clearly wants to, he looks at Kyungsoo and then blurts out, “Uh, you guys first!”

The game goes—well, about as Jongdae had expected at first. He carefully eats his way forward, though when he tries to give up Baekhyun grips his shoulders, laughter in his eyes. Jongdae whines in protest, because they could still win, and it’s not like this game is for them, anyway! But Baekhyun isn’t allowing it, just winks and crooks his finger like he’s beckoning Jongdae forward. 

Chanyeol laughs loudly. “You’re so-” he begins, giving Baekhyun a friendly shove.

Sending him lips-first onto Jongdae. Again.

By the time Jongdae finishes wailing, Baekhyun finishes choking, and Chanyeol and Kyungsoo finish laughing, no one’s in the mood to try the game again. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo occasionally debate if Baekhyun and Jongdae can claim a victory by forfeit given that Baekhyun swallowed the remaining piece in all the confusion, and Baekhyun occasionally tries his hand at pairing other people up (Chanyeol and Kyungsoo got together shortly after the ill-fated pocky game, though without any outside help) but Jongdae always insists on not getting involved.

 

 

 

 

The first two kisses were accidents, but the third…

“I can’t believe you picked me,” Baekhyun says through his laughter as the closet door closes behind them, a few of their classmates yelling reminders about the seven minute deadline.

“I figured you’d be less awkward,” Jongdae explains, because it’s either use that excuse or admit that he’d caught his ex-girlfriend’s eye and panicked.

He fumbles for his phone and turns on the flashlight app, illuminating Baekhyun’s face, way too close to Jongdae's and screwed up into his most grotesques expression.

Jongdae had expected him to do something like that, but he still yelps and startles back into a wall of coats, too on edge to take it in stride. Maybe it’s the dark; maybe it’s Baekhyun crowding forward into his space, bracing his hands on Jongdae’s shoulders and laughing again, the body heat emanating from him. It’s familiar yet new all over again in this context, the dark creating a sense of intimacy that has Jongdae on edge no matter how frequently he tells himself that it’s just Baekhyun.

“Why are we even playing this?!” Jongdae complains, shoving him back. Not that Baekhyun gives an inch, or that Jongdae had expected him to; instead he straddles Jongdae’s lap and settles in. Not that Jongdae’s thinking about it. “We’re seniors! Aren’t we too old for kissing games?”

“They’re classics,” Baekhyun debates.

Jongdae snorts. “Just because you rigged Spin the Bottle somehow-”

“I didn’t rig anything,” Baekhyun says, so serenely that Jongdae’s more sure than ever that he’s lying. “It’s fate.”

“Fate that you got picked six times in a row?”

“Maybe everyone wants me.” 

Jongdae can envision his grin. “Whatever!” he says, laughing.

“Even you picked me,” Baekhyun teases. “And you could’ve asked anybody.”

“Who should I have asked instead?” 

“What about Eunji?”

“She’s talking to Junghwan,” Jongdae reminds him.

“Oh, right. Seungwan?”

Jongdae shrugs. “Maybe. You were the first person I thought of.” He’s never liked games like this. It just makes things awkward. Even with his best friend—well, maybe awkward’s not exactly the word for this.

“I’m not even gonna get a kiss out of it,” Baekhyun complains playfully.

“You want me to kiss you?” Jongdae asks, incredulous, his voice cracking on the last word and his heart suddenly beating double-time. Baekhyun seems even closer, somehow, though Jongdae knows he hasn’t moved at all.

Baekhyun snorts. “No. You’re not very good at it.”

“Who says?” Jongdae asks indignantly. 

“I do. You’ve kissed me before, remember?”

“That doesn’t count! Those were accidents. I can kiss better than that.”

“Whatever you say,” Baekhyun says patronizingly, patting his shoulder.

Jongdae’s never entirely sure _why_ he does what he does next, but it happens—moving on impulse, he leans up and kisses Baekhyun. Baekhyun responds like he was waiting for it, not missing a beat, the way they always fit without even having to try. Admittedly them fitting together has never involved Jongdae’s tongue in Baekhyun’s mouth or Baekhyun’s hands under Jongdae’s shirt before, but, Jongdae dimly figures, there’s a first time for everything.

“Um,” Jongdae says at last, releasing his grip on Baekhyun’s ass to touch his own lips, in disbelief that any of that just happened.

Baekhyun’s voice is unsteady but immediate. “Probably a fluke,” he challenges, laughter and something else lilting his voice.

Jongdae knows he has nothing left to prove, but he still pulls Baekhyun back down for more, until they’re startled apart as the closet door is reopened by their laughing classmates. Baekhyun and Jongdae quickly disentangle themselves, squinting against the sudden flood of light.

“It’s about time!” Chanyeol says. He reaches in and grabs Baekhyun’s hand. Baekhyun helps Jongdae up, too, his touch sending a spark through Jongdae that it never had before. Or maybe, Jongdae’s starting to realize, one he hadn’t known to look for.


End file.
